


Inbooenza

by Skyuni123



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Comedy, Emotionally Repressed, F/F, Fluff, Humor, Pillow & Blanket Forts, Prank Wars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-25 15:29:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7538140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyuni123/pseuds/Skyuni123
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erin takes to Google and types ‘how to reciprocate romantic prank pulling by one of my closest friends without offending her because I think I’m in love with her and i want to respond in a way that makes sense oh my god’, and hits enter, because she’s giddy and frantic and Google always has the answer to everything.</p><p>Google’s results are, surprisingly, inconclusive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inbooenza

Erin takes to Google and types ‘how to reciprocate romantic prank pulling by one of my closest friends without offending her because I think I’m in love with her and i want to respond in a way that makes sense oh my god’, and hits enter, because she’s giddy and frantic and Google always has the answer to everything.

Google’s results are, surprisingly, inconclusive. 

-

The whole mess had started about a week earlier. 

We’re in another haunted house. It’s three am, and let’s be clear here, the team are all half-asleep.   
Ghost-hunting, despite being the hip new sport of the decade, does become somewhat repetitive after three straight nights of it. 

Erin’s just finished the largest cup of coffee known to man, and it’s had little to no effect, as her eyelids are mostly closed.   
Holtzmann is unceremoniously sprawled on a mouldy couch in one corner, one hand positioned over her eyes.   
Patty’s on her laptop. Doing what? We have no idea. We just know she’s being productive. Unlike everyone else.   
Abby was sent home several hours ago, with a bout of what she calls ‘EctoFlu’ (a flu-like illness caused by ghost contact), but what everyone else calls ‘Inbooenza’, _mainly_ for the pun.

On a scale between ‘watching paint dry’ and ‘destroying ghosts with proton whips’, the situation is dull. It’s no ‘watching grass grow’, but it’s certainly nothing to write home about.

Erin’s head lolls back and she sits up abruptly, her eyes snapping open. Instinctively, she grabs for her coffee, and finds that her cup doesn’t feel empty. Perhaps she didn’t drink all her coffee after all? No. Wait. Her cup feels _deceptively_ full. She peeks inside, bleary-eyed. It’s full of what smells like coffee. Taking a sip - because she lost any sort of self-preservation long before she became a scientist - she finds it is coffee. It’s not the sort of coffee she’d usually go for - she’s more fond of the stuff that could be used as jet fuel - and this is softer and more cinnamony.   
She likes it.   
Provided it isn’t some sort of weird ghost secretion. She sighs and drinks more. Wouldn’t be the first time. 

It takes a couple of minutes for it to hit her. Coffee just doesn’t apparate out of nowhere. She sits up, and tries to fix the other two women with a beady eye, although they’re sitting in opposite corners of the room. “So… uh, thanks for the coffee, guys?”

She’s greeted by a blank look and a, “huh?” from Patty, who goes back to her typing almost immediately.

Holtzmann removes her hand from her face, widens her eyes and goes, “Whhhaaatttt?” in a way that stops Erin asking any further questions.

The coffee is good. She doesn’t need to know anyone’s motives.

(They catch the ghost in the end. It’s a Class III floating man who just sobs silently when they catch him. It kills the mood.)

\--

A day or so later, Erin’s phone goes off.   
And it doesn’t stop. It’s the loudest, most violent, version of Cotton Eyed Joe that she’s ever heard. 

She might be a physicist, but she doesn’t know her way around her smartphone, that’s for sure. In the end, she has to throw it to Holtz, who is the only other person in the lab at the time. She takes a couple of moments, but mercifully, the lab falls quiet.

“You’re a lifesaver.” Erin gasps, taking the phone back.

“Oh, thank you.” Holtz winks at her, and bows dramatically at the waist. It’s surprisingly graceful for someone who clomps about in rain boots most of the time. “I try.”

It’s a simple gesture, but Erin can’t help gazing at the other woman, at the tension and lines of muscle in her arms and back as she bends. Her crop top rides up slightly under her overalls and Erin swallows, shaking her head. “Thanks again!” She stutters, anxious and awkward for reasons she can’t explain, and makes her way out. She trips over a large pot on the floor as she goes, but that doesn’t matter. 

The weirdness doesn’t stop. 

Two days later, after Abby has recovered from her small bout of Inbooenza, Erin’s coated in a faint layer of powdered sugar as she opens the door to the firehouse. It completely covers her (and by that she means completely) and it takes ten minutes in front of a fan and three showers to get the stuff completely out of her hair. 

Holtz sniffs her later and proclaimed, “You smell good. Like a cross between a Dunkin’ Donuts and a trip to Hawaii. I like it.”

Erin goes red right to the roots of her tropical-shampoo smelling hair and says nothing. You really can’t blame her for that. For a mid-30s physicist with a stunning face she’s weirdly repressed.

“So.” Abby says the next morning at the team meeting. (Team, in this case, being herself, Erin, and Patty. Holtzmann and Kevin are off buying sandwiches. It’s a sandwich sort of day.) “Is there any specific reason you’re wearing a Pride shirt you bought in 2003?”

Erin looks down at herself. The shirt she is wearing is slightly tighter than she is used to - considering white blouses are really her stock and trade - but it’s nothing obscene. It is, however, rainbow. Horribly so. “I had an incident with the washing machine.”

The washing machine rests in a corner of the firehouse. It’s rattley, and terrible, and probably haunted. Its name is Gerald. 

“A five-white-blouse related incident?” Patty asks, because by now they all know that Erin has five white blouses at the firehouse, and a couple of other t-shirts.   
It’s innate knowledge that comes with living together.

“Yeah.” Erin shrugs, “They came out smelling weird. Not terrible. Just weird. This is the only other shirt I have with me.”

“The only other shirt you have here is a Pride shirt?” Abby continues, slowly. “Really?”

“It’s for the gym!” Erin protests, unsure as to why she suddenly has to defend her motives. 

“Sure.” Abby gives her a weird look. “Fine. We’ll go back to -”

“Is it possible that I’m being haunted?” Erin interrupts, because she can’t keep it quiet any longer. She’s been mulling over the idea for a few hours now, and really, it seems legitimate. 

“...How exactly do you mean…?“ Abby says slowly, putting down her coffee cup.

“Coffee appeared out of nowhere that night we caught the Class III, I got covered in sugar, and now this!” Erin exclaims, “It’s weird, because I also got roses on my stoop this morning, but half of them were black roses, and I don’t understand what’s going on!”

“Erin -” Patty begins, but Erin talks over her, suddenly frustrated.

“I mean, to a point, it’s flattering, because I’ve never been sent roses before, and that was really good coffee, but I don’t know what’s doing it! Am I being haunted by a nice ghost? Is that even possible?” She huffs, restless after her outburst.

Patty and Abby share glances, ones that seem both exasperated and fond at the same time. They speak at the same time, talking over one another.

“Honey -”

“Do you think we should -”

“It wouldn’t be fair -”

“Maybe -”

“Erin, my oblivious young friend.” Abby shakes her head, and adjusts her glasses, “Why don’t you talk to Holtzmann?”

“Don’t give me that ‘young’ shit, Abby.” Erin glares at her, “You’re fifty-one days older than me. Why should I talk to Holtz?”

“Talk to her.” Patty interjects, “She’ll… she’ll know.”

-

Later, when all is said and sandwiches are done, Erin finds Holtzmann on the roof. 

She’s adjusting their radio mast - which is vaguely illegal, but also camouflaged as a chimney, so no-one will ever know.  
She hops down and grins, in the wild way that Erin has come to love after knowing her for about a year. “Hey.”

“Hey…” She’s uncomfortable, unsure of what to say. Confrontation has never been her thing. “Look, I don’t want to sound rude, but do you know anything about my laundry mishap this morning?”

“Gerald’s a bastard at the best of times.” Holtzmann says, because of course she does, “I don’t know why he made your shirts smell weird though. I’ll take a look. You should wear tees more often though.”

She raises an eyebrow at Erin, and her gaze _drinks_ her in.

It’s awkward, because Erin’s not used to anyone looking at her like that. She’s always been the frumpy one, the awkward one, the one reading books in the corner at the school dance. She wraps her arms around herself, only partly from the wind on the rooftop. “Thanks.” She mutters, turning to go.

But, wait. Something in the other woman’s words had stuck in her mind. “Wait.” She says, turning back, “I’m pretty sure I didn’t mention anything about any shirts at lunch.”

“You must have.” Holtzmann says quickly, turning back towards the chimney again.

“I didn’t…” Erin says slowly, running over what she can remember from lunch in her mind, “I’m sure I didn’t. Please, Holtz, be honest with me. No-one else has been today.”

(Even Kevin had lied about where he was going after lunch, but they all knew that he was going to hang out with his girlfriend at the rehearsal for their play, ‘A Bunch of Stuff’. No-one had the heart to tell him that it definitely wasn’t a secret.)

Holtzmann turns back, looking somewhat like a rabbit caught in headlights. “Okay.” She settles down onto a cleanish square of concrete. 

Slowly, Erin sits down opposite her, after moving what appears to be a box full of forks.

“Just let me say this.” The younger woman begins, looking down at the concrete uncomfortably. Her words come fast and flatly, as though she is trying to force them out, “My mom always said that the way to someone’s heart was to make them laugh, and even though she was wrong about pretty much everything else I thought it’d work but I got it a bit wrong I think. Physics studies how things work, but I don’t know how people work. I don’t know how you work, Erin. I thought if I made you laugh, I might.” 

“What are you saying?” Erin says, softly, amongst the cacophony of the traffic below. 

“I want to make you laugh. I want to understand you. I… _want_ you.”   
And without another word, the woman leaps to her feet and takes off towards the stairs that lead down to the rest of the firehouse.

Erin leans back and sighs.

After her heart rate has slowed down to something worth utilising, she makes her way downstairs to her laptop. She takes to Google and types ‘how to reciprocate romantic prank pulling by one of my closest friends without offending her because I think I’m in love with her and i want to respond in a way that makes sense oh my god’, and hits enter, because she’s giddy and despite the fact she feels like sunshine inside, she doesn’t know what to do.

Google’s results are, surprisingly, inconclusive.

Patty finds her there, later. She takes in the words on the screen in a second and says, mildly, “I take it it didn’t go well then.”

“You knew?” Erin mumbles, from the huddled position of someone with a lot of stuff to figure out. We’ve all been there.

“Honey, everyone knew. Even Kevin knew, and he knows nothing.”

“I have a degree, Patty, that’s not true!” The Australian shouts from across the room.

“Tell me about it later, Kev.” Patty yells back, “Erin’s having a crisis.”

“Tell the whole world, why don’t you.” 

“The whole world already knows, Erin.” 

“What, seriously?” She lifts her head from her arms and looks at the other woman.

“No…” The woman seems frustrated, “Erin Gilbert, Patty loves you, but you’re an idiot. Talk to Holtzy.” She makes shooing motions with her hands, “Go.”

Erin goes. 

She finds Holtzmann in her blanket nest in the alcove on third floor of the firehouse. She’s making her way through a massive bag of pink m&ms and looks up when Erin approaches. 

“Hey…” She says, and, after a lot of lifting, offers the bag of m&ms, “Want some?”

Erin settles on the edge of one of the blankets and takes a handful, “Thanks.”

The silence is unbearable, tactile and heavy in the air.

“I didn’t -”

“I’m sorry -”

They speak at the same time, words tripping over one another.

“You go.” Holtz mutters, voice gruff.

“It was sweet.” She’s hesitant, but her speech is laced with truth, “The roses. And the coffee. It was goo- it was right. How’d you do the thing with my shirts?”

Holtzmann raises her head slowly, looking at her with an unreadable expression. “It’s an ethanol blend, with a -”

“Shut up.” Erin says, and kisses her.

Things happen very quickly after that.  
It’s less fairytale than she expected, and more giggly. She’s never had a conversation about organic chemistry that turned out quite so erotic before.  
But that’s okay.

There’s room for improvement. They are scientists, after all. 

Later, when her hair is everywhere and she’s more sated than she’s ever been in her life, she asks, “So, are you going to fix my blouses?”

Jill rubs her thumb over Erin’s knuckles gently, “Sorry. It’s irreversible.” She shrugs. “Experimenting?”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah… You should totally wear more tees though.” She indicates at the Pride shirt (almost entirely covered in m&ms), which is far too far away to be reachable by either of them. “You know, for science.” 

“Ugh…” She huffs into the other woman’s neck, wrapping an arm around her, “You’re going to replace my blouses though, seriously, aren’t you?” 

“I can’t buy you new ones. Science reasons.” 

“Yeah. Science reasons. Who am I to interrupt the scientific method, huh? I guess I’ll just have to go without then.”

(They both come down with Inbooenza a couple of days later after Jill touches a ghost she shouldn't have. Apparently it transmits through bodily contact. Who knew.)

**Author's Note:**

> check out my ghostbusters tumblr at @pansexualjillianholtzmann and my usual tumblr at @villainousfilmmaker!! 
> 
> thanks for reading, my pals


End file.
